Break Into Chat articles

This page lists every article that has been published on the Break Into Chat blog, in reverse chronological order.

These articles include original research, interviews, retrospectives, and other BBS- and retrocomputing-related content.

The many ANSI title screens of Barren Realms Elite (BRE) (2026-05-02)
Don Lokke and “Mack the Mouse”: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 5 (2026-03-26)
The business of BBSing: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 4 (2026-03-17)
Eerie and “Inspector Dangerfuck”: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 3 (2025-12-31)
BBSes and the artscene: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 2 (2025-12-28)
Filling in the blanks: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 1 (2025-12-24)
Remembering the late Yaakov Kirschen (2025-05-08)
April Fools’ Day prank on Dark Force BBS (2025-04-03)
A time capsule for 314 Day: St. Louis-area BBS message networks (2025-03-14)
Some love for VT52 on the Atari ST (2025-02-16)
Digging in to “Nosh Kosh,” the Jewish Pac-Man clone (2025-02-14)
IGNITE – The first all-IGS artpack! (2024-12-31)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 6: Legacy (2024-10-25)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 5: Point and click (2024-09-13)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 4: The artist and the community (2024-08-23)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 3: The adventure begins (2024-08-10)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 2: Larry Mears (2024-08-04)
Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 1: Introduction (2024-08-02)
I’m heading to Atlanta — plus, Jack Tramiel’s phone numbers (2024-05-17)
The college basketball bracket … in ANSI (2024-03-18)
Revisiting my ANSI tile map (2024-03-13)
Try Kirschen’s games and software on the Internet Archive (2024-02-24)
Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Magic Harp” for Commodore Amiga (2024-01-03)
Our latest special collection: The ACE-St. Louis “NewsLine” (2023-09-03)
Unearthed: My old OASIS BBS Atari floppy disk (2023-07-20)
Slides yield glimpses of Kirschen’s lost “Magic Harp” software (2023-03-08)
Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor (2023-02-07)
Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC (2022-11-29)
Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects (2022-11-28)
Unearthed: Kirschen’s independent Apple II projects (2022-11-27)
Unearthed: Kirschen’s Apple II games for Gesher (2022-11-26)
Bringing dry bones back to life: The Kirschen software collection (2022-11-26)
Ten years of Break Into Chat! (2022-11-25)
Thinking about Jadzia, C.G., and our ephemeral digital lives (2022-11-24)
Joe Reiss, creator of the “Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary” (2022-09-28)
Remembering the S.O.S. — the Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary (2022-09-23)
Appreciating the physicality of floppies (2022-01-10)
“Creaks” scene 45: Goat glitch (2021-01-17)
Jon Radoff’s BBS-related correspondence (2020-12-03)
Paul Witte and Herb Flower, creators of Thieves’ Guild (2020-09-15)
I completed my 7-year quest to play Thieves’ Guild (2020-09-15)
A different way to play, part 5: TWTerm (2020-09-09)
A different way to play, part 4: GTERM (2020-09-09)
A different way to play, part 3: OOIITERM (2020-09-09)
A different way to play, part 2: Pit Terminal (2020-09-09)
A different way to play: front-ends (2020-09-09)
Tutorial: Telnet to a BBS using a terminal program in the Hatari emulator (2020-09-04)
Unearthed: Dark Fortress for the Atari ST (2020-06-04)
Unearthed: My Atari 8-bit cassette tape (2020-05-30)
Slack API documentation mentions BBS door games (2020-04-12)
Fidonet archive update (2019-11-26)
Gary Martin, creator of “TradeWars 2002” (2019-07-19)
Archiving 300,000 Fidonet messages (2019-05-08)
Using high res on my Atari ST with the CosmosEx and a wire (2019-02-12)
Modding an iPod 3G to use a CompactFlash card (2018-07-04)
New ANSImation: Star Trek: The Trouble With The Rangifer Tarandus (2018-02-14)
Web browsing on the Atari ST with a CosmosEx (2017-09-06)
I rescued “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST (2017-06-14)
New ANSImation: Star Wars opening crawl (2017-05-25)
New parallax ANSImation: Millennium Falcon dodging asteroids (2017-05-25)
Detention Block AA-23 (2017-05-25)
RS232 WiFi dongle for your retrocomputer (2017-05-05)
Who needs SVG when you’ve got ANSI? (2016-10-04)
My first ANSI portrait (2016-09-20)
Converting movie clips to ANSImation (2016-07-04)
Jon Radoff, creator of “Space Empire Elite” and “Final Frontier” (2016-02-02)
ANSI mermaid swims in parallax (2015-10-31)
“From Here to Eternity” launches today (2015-09-28)
Shooter Jennings, creator of “From Here to Eternity” (2015-09-18)
Talking BBSes on the Electric Dreams podcast (2015-09-08)
ANSI tile map (2015-05-27)
Parallax-scrolling effect … in ANSI (2015-01-15)
Merry Christmas … Atari STyle (2014-12-22)
Hatari, Lantronix, and CosmosEx: My quixotic quest to play “Thieves Guild” (2014-11-12)
A Star Trek font for the new Star Wars movie? (2014-11-07)
The vicious circles of Google Plus (2014-05-31)
Introducing my new game, “Doubles” (2014-05-29)
Mother’s Day: “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST (2014-05-11)
ATASCII animations (2014-05-07)
Second collection: BBS-related podcasts (2014-04-09)
Trade Wars vs. Legend of the Red Dragon: Which was the most popular? (2014-03-25)
Hearing from my software heroes (2014-03-13)
Introducing our first special collection: Door World Magazine (2014-03-08)
Jewels, bats, and balls (2014-02-26)
Talking BBS games on the Bobby Blackwolf Show (2014-02-19)
Me vs. the Super Bowl (2014-01-31)
Seth Robinson talks LORD and Planets: TEOS with Matt Barton (2014-01-02)
One year of Break Into Chat (2013-12-02)
Happy birthday, Atari Jaguar (2013-11-21)
“On The Media” revisits a BBS “ghost town” (2013-11-08)
Hollie Satterfield, creator of “Space Dynasty” (2013-11-06)
Space Dynasty memories (2013-11-05)
Another BBS game under development (2013-09-28)
ANSI_GFX_ADVNTR (2013-09-27)
Birthday screens using GIF -> ANSI converters (2013-09-20)
Kevin MacFarland, creator of “Assassin” (2013-09-06)
Assassin memories (2013-09-05)
More VT-52 demos (2013-08-11)
Bolivia vacation: Photo and video editing choices (2013-07-17)
Visualizing 314: The directories, the data, and the caveats (2013-06-06)
Visualizing 314: The St. Louis scene in charts (2013-06-06)
Visualizing 314: Fire Escape’s BBS Directory (2013-06-06)
The future of news, as predicted in 1993 (2013-05-30)
Austin Seraphin, creator of “Barneysplat!” (2013-05-08)
Barneysplat! memories (2013-05-07)
From newsletter to magazine (2013-04-29)
The FBI’s Atari files (2013-04-21)
Telnet to a BBS using a PC terminal program within the DOSBox emulator (2013-04-18)
Kids drawing on computers, then and now (2013-04-06)
Emulation is time travel (2013-04-01)
BBS door games + microtransactions = Zynga (2013-03-23)
Joel Bergen, creator of “Global War” and “Global Backgammon” (2013-03-21)
Global War memories (2013-03-20)
Video: “The Joy of ASCII with Bob Ross” (2013-02-26)
Amit Patel, creator of “Solar Realms Elite” (2013-02-18)
Solar Realms Elite memories (2013-02-14)
BBS doors: innovative social games? (2013-01-30)
BBS Documentary clip: TradeWars (2013-01-29)
VT-52 demo: Beat Nick Part 2 (2013-01-23)
“Why I love my ATARI Computer” (2012-12-24)
The Commodore 64 (2012-12-24)
The Christmas we got an Atari Jaguar (2012-12-17)
Forget his joining Twitter, how about the time the Pope got a 1-900 number? (2012-12-14)
Telnet to a BBS using a terminal program in the Hatari emulator (2012-12-13)
So it begins. (2012-12-13)
The birth of “Break Into Chat” (2012-12-12)